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vcmwSo I've been thinking a lot about the kind of prejudice that I, as someone with certain categories of privilege, am reactive about. By which I mean the kinds of privilege that when someone who doesn't have it calls me on it, my immediate reaction is not, "oh, yes, of course, that sucks," but more like "hey, you get off of my lawn."
And the more I think about it, the more it feels parallel to conversations about pollution.
In this particular metaphor I'm stretching, the entirety of humanity is a natural resource. And prejudice is the pollution of that resource. And I was thinking about this particularly in the context of racism, though I think it holds true for a lot of kinds of prejudice and prejudicial behavior: there exists behavior that is clearly point-source pollution, and behavior that is... diffuse? non point-source? pollution. And a lot of conversations about prejudice seem to sort of be one person going to the other "hey, you, you're polluting. Stop that. Give a hoot, don't pollute." And the second person replies, "umm, no, I'm not polluting. Polluting is when you dump 100 lbs of mercury directly in to a well. I just threw out a blinkin' thermometer and sprayed some RoundUp on my weeds because they were out of a control. Go bug someone else. Go bug the thermometer manufacturer, or that pesticide plant, and leave me be." And the first person sits there seething, conscious of the fact that 100,000 people in town have sprayed pesticide on their lawns and used too much nitrogen and the whole watershed is poisoned and oh yea kids are dying from lead poisoning and getting sick from mercury in ground water from badly disposed household waste.
The idea of this came to mind when reading a lot about watershed pollution in Lake Champlain, near where I live. There's a lot of talk about trying to clean up the watershed, because lake water quality is clearly suffering. And one of the problems is that it's not, at least on the VT side of the lake, a case of "oh, this one factory right on the lake is dumping XYZ straight in to the lake, if we shut them down, everything will be hunky-dory." It's more a case of, "wow, there are a lot of cows taking a crap by the lake. Hey, there are a lot of lawns that are over fertilized. Wow, there are sure a lot of parking lots where there used to be individual little wetlands."
And, y'know, one cow taking a dump by the lake does not a pollution problem make. One cow doing its thing is just a cow. One person, spraying who knows what on their lawn once a year, does not probably a pollution problem make. It's just one person, trying to get that nice green lawn they saw on the advertisement.
But all those cows and farms and lawns and parking lots make a problem.
From the point of view of someone with privilege, that kinda racist comment is no big deal. It was just one stupid thing they (ok, me) said. It was just that one time that they gave that one person a dirty look, and no, it wasn't because of what they looked like, really. It was how they didn't buy that book because the person on the cover didn't look like them. And the thing is, each one of those tiny acts might not be a big deal in a society where they weren't the norm. But we do live in a society where those things are the norm. And they do have a measurable, toxic effect on us, humanity. Our tiny racist acts, or our tiny failures to not do things that are anti-racist, are a constant source of pollution that harms us as humans. We are polluting ourselves and our culture.
It's a lot easier to point at that one sheriff who set the dogs on people because of the color of their skin. Or the CEO of a company who had a hiring policy that excluded people because of their background. Look, point source pollution! Make it stop and everything will be fine.
Once you start to eliminate the point-sources of pollution though, you look around and go, wow, our lake is still totally polluted. And it's getting worse, not better. And then you have to start the tricky hard learning process of doing everything in your life differently, even the little stuff that seems like no big deal.
And the more I think about it, the more it feels parallel to conversations about pollution.
In this particular metaphor I'm stretching, the entirety of humanity is a natural resource. And prejudice is the pollution of that resource. And I was thinking about this particularly in the context of racism, though I think it holds true for a lot of kinds of prejudice and prejudicial behavior: there exists behavior that is clearly point-source pollution, and behavior that is... diffuse? non point-source? pollution. And a lot of conversations about prejudice seem to sort of be one person going to the other "hey, you, you're polluting. Stop that. Give a hoot, don't pollute." And the second person replies, "umm, no, I'm not polluting. Polluting is when you dump 100 lbs of mercury directly in to a well. I just threw out a blinkin' thermometer and sprayed some RoundUp on my weeds because they were out of a control. Go bug someone else. Go bug the thermometer manufacturer, or that pesticide plant, and leave me be." And the first person sits there seething, conscious of the fact that 100,000 people in town have sprayed pesticide on their lawns and used too much nitrogen and the whole watershed is poisoned and oh yea kids are dying from lead poisoning and getting sick from mercury in ground water from badly disposed household waste.
The idea of this came to mind when reading a lot about watershed pollution in Lake Champlain, near where I live. There's a lot of talk about trying to clean up the watershed, because lake water quality is clearly suffering. And one of the problems is that it's not, at least on the VT side of the lake, a case of "oh, this one factory right on the lake is dumping XYZ straight in to the lake, if we shut them down, everything will be hunky-dory." It's more a case of, "wow, there are a lot of cows taking a crap by the lake. Hey, there are a lot of lawns that are over fertilized. Wow, there are sure a lot of parking lots where there used to be individual little wetlands."
And, y'know, one cow taking a dump by the lake does not a pollution problem make. One cow doing its thing is just a cow. One person, spraying who knows what on their lawn once a year, does not probably a pollution problem make. It's just one person, trying to get that nice green lawn they saw on the advertisement.
But all those cows and farms and lawns and parking lots make a problem.
From the point of view of someone with privilege, that kinda racist comment is no big deal. It was just one stupid thing they (ok, me) said. It was just that one time that they gave that one person a dirty look, and no, it wasn't because of what they looked like, really. It was how they didn't buy that book because the person on the cover didn't look like them. And the thing is, each one of those tiny acts might not be a big deal in a society where they weren't the norm. But we do live in a society where those things are the norm. And they do have a measurable, toxic effect on us, humanity. Our tiny racist acts, or our tiny failures to not do things that are anti-racist, are a constant source of pollution that harms us as humans. We are polluting ourselves and our culture.
It's a lot easier to point at that one sheriff who set the dogs on people because of the color of their skin. Or the CEO of a company who had a hiring policy that excluded people because of their background. Look, point source pollution! Make it stop and everything will be fine.
Once you start to eliminate the point-sources of pollution though, you look around and go, wow, our lake is still totally polluted. And it's getting worse, not better. And then you have to start the tricky hard learning process of doing everything in your life differently, even the little stuff that seems like no big deal.
